Cry to Prove Your Purity
“This bastard! At last you’ve become the same as me!”
Se-gun recovered Noctis, the black blade freed from its seal by the Messiah’s annihilation, and fixed his gaze on Sarhyuk. Even reduced to a body length of twelve meters, the thing was still immense. And having just devoured the Messiah, its VT must have soared beyond imagination.
“……Heh. Don’t make me laugh. The same as you? Sharing blood doesn’t make us the same. Right? Twelve-meter male Juliet!”
In the end, what remained was a man who slaughtered vampires out of pure hatred and a man who could murder anyone for his own gain without a shred of emotion. By Se-gun’s values the latter was utterly incomprehensible—and thus hated even more than the vampires themselves. And this final opponent appeared precisely when Se-gun himself had become a vampire! How could he not be delighted? So Se-gun laughed.
“Wrong! This is after the diet. I used to be sixteen meters! You dog of a Romeo, ignoring all my hard work!”
“Fine, then. Let’s paint Shakespeare’s grave with blood. How about Romeo, unable to stand Juliet’s hideous form, packing her full of bullets and explosives?!”
Se-gun and Sarhyuk burst into simultaneous peals of laughter. In that moment, even with one wearing a monster’s shape and the other fully turned vampire, blue ghost-light spilling from his eyes, the two of them could not have looked more alike. Sarhyuk’s claim that they were kindred almost sounded persuasive.
“How about Juliet, suffering the rebound from her diet, devouring Romeo instead? Call it the yo-yo effect.”
“……Dunno. Anything that desecrates English literature works for me, but I refuse to play the role of frolicking with another guy. Die already!”
Facing Sarhyuk head-on, Se-gun declared it flatly, then kicked the TNT he had prepared for the Messiah. Startled, Sarhyuk tried to swat it aside, but his now-colossal frame lacked the fine control to catch a single small TNT bar.
“What?!”
Se-gun vanished behind a shipping container. In the same instant the TNT detonated. The blast shattered Sarhyuk’s forepaw and scoured flesh and bone, scattering them in every direction.
“KRAAAAAH! Han Se-gun!”
Howling in agony, Sarhyuk toppled forward. More TNT bars already lay waiting on the ground where Se-gun had scattered them.
“Kh!”
Supporting himself on the broken forepaw, Sarhyuk leapt. Successive explosions swallowed his hind legs, yet he managed to scramble onto a container.
“Gah!”
With both hind legs gone he collapsed forward again. Balance was impossible.
“You son of a bitch! Get cocky just because I’ve been going easy on you!”
Sarhyuk roared, yet the Se-gun of this moment was more terrifying than anyone. Still—he had just consumed the Messiah. Even after losing two hundred thousand VT fighting Phantom, the gains from killing the Messiah left him stronger than before, not weaker. Proof: though it was not the full moon, the severed limbs were regenerating at astonishing speed. And it was not limited to Sarhyuk’s main body. Fragments torn from his flesh regenerated as if they possessed lives of their own, becoming bear-shaped magic beasts.
“Go!”
Sarhyuk sent the beasts forward and charged after them himself. The intelligence Se-gun held on Tetra Anax was something every vampire needed. Knowing that, Se-gun was using the data as bait to wipe out every vampire he could before the night ended, luring them in one after another.
Vrrroooom!
Se-gun mounted his bike, tore out of the container yard, and raced toward the pier.
“Stop or we open fire!”
Harbor security shouted the obligatory warning. Se-gun ignored them and kept going. Behind him the bears born of Sarhyuk’s blood and flesh closed in.
“Hup! Bears!”
“What kind of bear bullshit is that?!”
Then the searchlights caught the beasts clearly.
“Holy shit! What the hell is that?!”
“Shoot!”
The officers poured bullets into them on pure reflex. One of the bear-shaped magic beasts, bleeding, slammed into a container and staggered sideways before collapsing. The other vaulted lightly over the barrage and landed atop the barricade. Jaws gaping, thick saliva streaming, it lunged at a living man, aiming to swallow him head-first, sharp teeth driving toward his face.
“Aaaagh!”
The harbor guards screamed—exactly when a gunshot cracked.
Bang!
The beast’s head exploded. The man on the motorcycle had swung what looked like a K-2 rifle backward and fired.
“Wha—”
“Did he just help us?”
That thought flickered through the security detail. Help was welcome, but he was still an illegal trespasser!
Kruuuuuuuhhh!
If not for the monster behind them they would have chased the rider down this second. But with a twelve-meter shaggy colossus thundering after him, who had attention left for a man on a bike?
“Uwaaaah!”
Hearing the guards scream and fall back, Se-gun braked to a halt in front of a warehouse, looked over his shoulder, and laughed. Three hundred meters away, Sarhyuk was sprinting with everything he had.
“I’m glad you’re my last opponent, Sarhyuk.”
Sarhyuk advanced beneath the searchlights, massive body blotting out the world like a cliff. Ah—the worst hunter who had plundered the very vampires Se-gun hated most, the heretic of the vampire hunters whose atrocities had turned vampires into victims and gifted them moral high ground. Se-gun hated him for that. And because he hated him, he hated himself. But tonight even that would end. A life stuffed full of hatred and loathing had already ended the moment he became a vampire.
“……Good thing I saved this instead of wasting it on the others!”
Se-gun shouted and pressed the remote hanging from his shoulder. This was the stage he had prepared for the final battle from the beginning; of course traps were already laid. He had meant to lure the Messiah here and detonate them—yet he had waited, half hoping the one he hated most would appear instead.
“Jesus!”
Sarhyuk clenched his teeth, but the charges planted in the ground, under the cranes, along the warehouse eaves were already going off!
Earth-shaking blasts reduced everything around them to rubble. Until now he had mostly used third-rate TNT; this time he had broken out top-grade high explosives laced with Composition-4 and RDX. He had mixed in Claymores for extra shrapnel, but even Claymores used Composition-4, so they belonged to the same family.
Krrrrrrrrrboom!
Harbor warehouses shattered. Dust rocketed skyward so thick nothing could be seen.
“Last words are ‘Jesus’? Cheap, Sarhyuk! The one you ate for your Last Supper was the Messiah. The Messiah!”
Se-gun rode the blast wave backward. Dust boiled into the heavens; the entire district shuddered under the storm. Even he wondered if he had overdone it—then a gigantic forearm crashed onto the asphalt from above.
“Ah.”
It was unmistakably a shaggy bear’s forepaw. After it came a rain of blood and meat.
“…….”
Se-gun stared into the heart of the explosion. Judging by the injuries alone, even Sarhyuk could not have survived that blast. On a full-moon night the bastard might have regenerated after being strapped to a nuclear warhead or ground into powder and scattered from the air—but tonight, thankfully, was only a half-moon.
“Well then, trash who kills without even hatred! Trash who fell so far he became a vampire of his own free will! This is the trap I prepared just for you. Worth the wait, wasn’t it?”
Se-gun flung the question into the crater where Sarhyuk had stood. A hard sea wind swept the dust aside; vision slowly returned.
Ah—it was a magnificent scene of destruction. The harbor floor had been torn open, earth heaved up and smothering everything. Sarhyuk’s huge body had not escaped intact; it lay in pieces, the ground looking like an unswept slaughterhouse slick with blood and flesh.
Yet as Se-gun examined the fragments he realized the most important pieces were missing. Neither the sacred relic nor Sarhyuk’s head was anywhere to be found. Either one would be enough for regeneration. Se-gun plunged among the scattered remains of the body.
“No way—”
Impossible. That explosion should have killed even Tetra Anax. At that moment space warped and Sarhyuk appeared behind Se-gun!
“I should thank Zein!”
Fully restored to human form, Sarhyuk landed at Se-gun’s back and reached out. Startled, Se-gun spun—but Sarhyuk’s fist was already flying at his face.
Kwaak!
Se-gun deflected the punch cleanly with his elbow, the brutal counter snapping Sarhyuk’s fingers. Even so, the raw power pouring from that massive frame was no joke. Though he had blocked, a numbing force paralyzed his whole body. For Se-gun, who had completely shut off pain with Psychedelic Moon, to be pinned in place by sheer momentum—!
It’s over!
Se-gun stared at Sarhyuk, ready to die. His body was locked; if Sarhyuk chose to eat him, he would be eaten.
Yet Sarhyuk did not follow up. No—he could not.
“Kh, you bastard!”
Come to think of it, Sarhyuk himself had only one arm left. A near-ambush attack had been perfectly stopped; he was in no position for a chain assault.
Sarhyuk forced the broken fingers straight, knitting bone, and shouted:
“Kh! Why go this far? You’ve been shredded fighting vampires all night—how the hell are you still matching a Jinma like me?”
“……Who knows.”
Se-gun flipped forward and drove a kick into Sarhyuk’s face. Sarhyuk staggered back, new arm regenerating, and seized Se-gun’s leg—only for detonating cord, somehow already wrapped around the limb, to explode.
The blast sheared the arm off. Still reeling from the shock, Se-gun rose and drove a fist into Sarhyuk’s chest. Fully vampire now, Se-gun caved the ribs in at once.
“Guh!”
Sarhyuk’s body folded in pain. Se-gun launched a high kick at his skull. To break the chain of attacks Sarhyuk vaulted backward, barely clearing the strike.
“Ugh, Han Se-gun! You monster!”
“I don’t want to hear that from you.”
Se-gun raised the hand wound with wire. Between his fingers his pupils burned with blue ghost-light, the flaming gaze making him look even more terrifying.
“Kh! Hahahaha. Dying by your hand would be an honor!”
“Then die honorably already.”
With a bored expression Se-gun flung the detonating cord. Sarhyuk dodged and bellowed:
“But I am Sarhyuk! The alchemist who made a name among vampire hunters, and then had the gall to become a Jinma! I refuse to just die!”
The sacred relic burst from Sarhyuk’s torso and vomited a sphere of absolute darkness.
Oooooohhh!
Anyone caught in that darkness—even a Jinma—would freeze solid for a moment. And because the power was founded on magic, Se-gun, a complete outsider to the art, had no normal way to stop it. Yet he raised Noctis and met the attack. The darkness parted like a wave. Possible only because Noctis and the relic were essentially the same existence.
“Impossible!”
Sarhyuk recoiled in shock. From a low crouch Se-gun exploded forward, slamming Noctis against Sarhyuk’s side and driving past. Sarhyuk threw himself clear—only for another blast to erupt.
Kwaaaang!
Se-gun had detonated more cord.
“What now?”
Sarhyuk retreated from the explosion, eyes on Se-gun. Then a metallic screech of something falling reached him. Spatial sense told him instantly: the crane chain, severed by detonating cord, was dropping.
“Shit!”
Sarhyuk leapt forward to avoid the chain. In that same instant Se-gun charged straight at him.
“Kyaaaah!”
The relic clawed at Se-gun’s face, but he simply ran through, past Sarhyuk.
Sssshnk!
Darkness streaked horizontally; Sarhyuk’s body and the relic were sliced clean through at the same time. Sarhyuk crumpled onto the shattered concrete. Se-gun did not stop. He sprinted to the forklift parked beside the warehouse and vaulted into the seat.
Guuuuuung!
Black exhaust belched as the forklift lurched into motion. The heavy black machine gathered speed and hurtled toward Sarhyuk. He had to dodge—had to—yet his legs would not move. Of course not. His waist was already severed.
“Kh! Ahahahahahahahaha!”
Sarhyuk could not stop the laughter that burst out of him. Why? Until now he had lived only for himself. Why, on the brink of extinction, did he feel so exhilarated?
Kwaang!
The thick forks of the machine impaled both him and the relic. With surprisingly competent handling Se-gun worked the controls, spreading the forks and ripping the sacred relic free of Sarhyuk’s body.
Udeudeuk!
Already rooted into bone, the relic tore free taking vertebrae and chunks of flesh with it. Blood and meat rained onto the ground like a cloudburst.
“Krrrrgh!”
Sarhyuk writhed in agony, staring up at Se-gun. Expressionless, Se-gun climbed down from the forklift and drew Beast. Backlit by moonlight, his green hair swayed and glittered. Cheap dye, no doubt—yet no one wore it better. A human who had become a demon through hatred bordering on obsession!
“Hah… hah… Ugh. That earlier bomb really did a number on me. Can’t even transform.”
Sarhyuk clicked his tongue, feeling the werebear form refuse to come. The match was already decided.
Click!
Se-gun leveled Beast at his head. Suddenly Sarhyuk opened his mouth.
“Drink my blood!”
A strange light flickered through Se-gun’s eyes. Being valued highly was fine—until the one doing the valuing was a vampire he had to kill. But this bastard was telling him to kill him from the start.
“……I’ve refused that offer how many times already?”
“No…… I don’t want that. I’m different from the rest! Because those bastards would never make this kind of proposal…….”
“……?”
Se-gun lowered the gun for a moment and looked at him. Sarhyuk, eyes already so dim he could no longer see his surroundings, smiled and spoke.
“Drink my blood! You’ve beaten the hell out of me, but the parts my lycanthrope regeneration restored still hold a lot of vampire factor! Eat it…… then eat the other vampires too…… and defeat Tetra Anax!”
“…….”
Sarhyuk’s hand closed on Se-gun’s face. Not to crush it with that grip—rather, like a blind man identifying someone by touch, he was mapping Se-gun’s features with his broad palm.
“You’re the one who most deserves the title King of the Night! Don’t let those other bastards take the seat!”
“The offer is definitely tempting, but…….”
Se-gun pressed the muzzle against Sarhyuk’s skull. The cold barrel of the magic revolver Beast kissed the center of his forehead.
“Cry for me.”
“……!”
Sarhyuk’s body jerked in a spasm. In the same cold voice Se-gun repeated:
“Cry and prove your purity.”
With the moon at his back, Se-gun’s face was lost in shadow. Perhaps he was smiling; perhaps he looked ready to weep at any second. That figure was so magnificent, so lofty, so sorrowful that Sarhyuk only grinned wider and answered.
“Idiot. Even when I was human I never cried once.”
The instant the words ended, a single gunshot rang out into the darkness.
The distant crash of waves reached them faintly as a black sports car tore along the highway. The sleek machine hugged corners at nearly three hundred kilometers an hour.
“Ah, Silvester. Safe driving! Safe driving!”
The young woman in the passenger seat scolded the driver. But once you passed three hundred, “safe driving” had already been left far behind. The long-haired silver priest at the wheel knew it and never lifted his foot from the accelerator.
“I think that’s it over there.”
The woman pointed out the window. Even from roughly ten kilometers away the towering pillar of dust was unmistakable, rising endlessly into the night sky. Successive explosions rolled across the distance.
“Impressive.”
How much explosive had he used? Enough to level a high-rise, easily. But more impressive still was the sheer nerve required to set it off. What Se-gun had done tonight was the act of a man who had already given up living in this country. Make that much noise and even the underworld would no longer shelter you.
Consider the bounty on Se-gun’s head. No matter how much drug dealing or arms trafficking you did, once the price on that neck became impossible to ignore, every underworld figure would suddenly want to climb into bed with the police.
“……Wait for me.”
The black-clad priest, Silvester, checked the familiar weight of Beast and floored the pedal harder.
Se-gun sat on the breakwater staring out at the night sea. The filthy Yellow Sea held no noctiluca, yet the distant fishing boats working under their lights looked just like them.
“So this is the end.”
He opened his hand and examined it. Regeneration slower than any of the vampires he had fought until now—yet the wounds were definitely closing. Estimated VT around three thousand? Drinking the Messiah’s blood had done most of the work. At this level the rising sun would simply burn the body away.
“Heh heh heh heh!”